Let’s get you to In-N-Out
My eight year-old and I were waiting for the school bus this morning when I commented on his t-shirt, which was from the West Coast fast-food chain In-N-Out burger. It is a particularly popular chain, appreciated by its fans for its fresh ingredients — burgers so good that customers overlook the weird, soggy fries.
I told him that, when I was in Houston last week, I’d gotten In-N-Out. His response was to briefly express jealousy before asking a valid question: There’s In-N-Out in Texas?
I’ll admit that I hadn’t known that either until I was there. In-N-Out’s restaurants are usually clustered, anecdotally because it assures access to those fresh ingredients. Maybe that’s not why; that’s not the point. The point is that I suddenly realized that I didn’t know exactly where In-N-Out could be found. And then I had an interesting thought, given Houston’s location in Texas: Had I eaten at the furthest-east In-N-Out Burger? More intriguingly, had I eaten at the In-N-Out closest to my house?
This was a job for a guy who is good with data. Happily, I know one.
First thing was to find a list of restaurant locations (which the chain publishes online) and then to geolocate them (easy enough with Geocod.io). And, just like that, I could produce a map.
As it turns out, I had not eaten at the easternmost In-N-Out. The restaurant at The Woodlands (in yellow on the map above) is only the second easternmost franchise. The easternmost is in Webster, Texas. The most western, meanwhile, is in Eureka, Calif., in the upper left corner of the state.
(For the sake of completion, the furthest north and south are in Ridgefield, Wash. and San Antonio, respectively.)
The In-N-Out I’d gone to was also not the closest to my house in New York. That honor — and it is an honor — goes to the restaurant in Rockwall, Texas. (It’s also in yellow above.) This is as-the-crow-flies, mind you, not if I wanted to drive or fly to get a burger in an airplane. It is simply the closest I am to an In-N-Out grilled cheese on any given day, the place where its food has the strongest gravitational pull on me.
Perhaps you’d like to know where your closest In-N-Out is? Well, sure; who wouldn’t. Since I had the data in hand, I made a little tool that will allow you to locate it.
First, let’s find you.
To find your closest In-N-Out:
- Click the button below.
- Click “Allow” when your browser asks for location permission.
- If it’s blocked, click the location icon in your address bar and enable location sharing.
- Refresh the page if needed.
- Or just do your own Google search, I guess.